HOW OUR DAD BECAME A WARD OF THE SAN DIEGO COUNTY PUBLIC GUARDIAN TO BE USED AS A SOURCE OF REVENUE...ESTATE PLANS AND TRUST WERE IGNORED...HE WAS IMPRISONED AGAINST HIS WILL AT MERRILL GARDENS RCFE...HE WAS ISOLATED AND NOT ALLOWED FAMILY VISITORS...11+ "UNWITNESSED FALLS", HEAD INJURIES, MASSIVE CUTS, BRUISES. A HUMAN PINATA THAT LAWYERS, COUNTY AGENCIES, FOR PROFIT RCFES BEAT AND GRABBED MONEY AND PROPERTY THAT FELL UNTIL HE COLLAPSED AND DIED. THEY WERE "PROTECTING HIM"...

A person subject to guardianship has been judicially determined to lack legal capacity. Stripped of legal personhood, the individual becomes a ward of the state and his or her decisions are delegated to a guardian. If the guardian abuses that power or the guardianship has been wrongly imposed — as research suggests is not infrequently the case — the person subject to guardianship may rightly wish to mount a legal challenge. However, effectively doing so requires the assistance of an attorney, and persons subject to guardianship typically have not only been declared by a court to be incapable of directing their own affairs but have been stripped of the capacity to contract. As a result, those who wish to challenge the terms and conditions of their guardianship, or even merely to exercise unrelated retained rights, can be stymied because attorneys are unwilling to accept representation for fear that it is unlawful or unethical. Drawing on constitutional law, as well as the law of agency and contract, this Article shows why such representations are, contrary to the assumptions of many attorneys, not merely legally permissible but essential to protect fundamental constitutional rights. It then explores the professional rules governing attorney conduct in order to show how attorneys may ethically represent persons subject to guardianship. Finally, it proposes a modest change to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct to clarify attorneys’ duties in this context.